BELGRADE, August 1. /TASS/. Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic-led authorities have "turned the sky and the earth" in their efforts to defuse tensions in Kosovo and Metohija, the director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Petar Petkovic said.
"Serbia has warned of the risks of an escalation for weeks and months. Preparations for Pristina’s campaign had been afoot for a long time. A flow of disinformation from Kosovo’s portals and the region’s media came pouring like rain as if on orders from on high," Petkovic said on the national television on Monday.
"Vucic-led Serbia works for peace and stability in the region, because this is the sole way to move forward, to build industries and to pay wages and pensions. Resolute efforts by President Vucic and all of us, in particular, those over the past 24 hours, virtually turned the sky and the earth. We contacted all actors involved who managed to influence [the prime minister of unrecognized Kosovo] Albin Kurti," he stressed.
Petkovic said that Pristina last night defaulted on its pledge to postpone the ban on Serbian documents. Checkpoints on the administrative line continued to hand out migration lists to Serbian citizens. He expressed the hope that this procedure would end soon.
Petkovic stressed that the Kosovar Albanians were trying to drive Serbs out of the territory, of which 206 ethnically motivated attacks against Serb population, committed since the moment Kurti took office, were clear evidence.
On Sunday evening, the situation in Kosovo and Metohija worsened sharply after the police of the unrecognized entity closed the checkpoint on the administrative line with Serbia, intending to impose a ban on Serbian documents as of Monday. In response, Serbs in the northern part of Kosovo took to the streets to demonstrate and block the main roads. Sirens were heard in a number of cities in the north of the region. Police and personnel of the international security force in Kosovo KFOR, operating under the auspices of NATO, were moved to the bridge across the Ibar River, which connects the north and south of Kosovska-Mitrovica.
As a result of international efforts Pristina postponed the procedure of enforcing the ban on Serbian documents till 1 September.